Call Me Old Fashioned but I Think Your Shorts Should Be Longer Memes

Thought or thought that tin can be shared, in analogy to a gene

A meme ( MEEM )^{[i] [2] [3]} is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person inside a civilisation and often carries symbolic significant representing a particular phenomenon or theme.^[4] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one heed to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes equally cultural analogues to genes in that they cocky-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.^[5]

Proponents theorize that memes are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by natural option in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution.^[6] Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, contest, and inheritance, each of which influences a meme's reproductive success. Memes spread through the beliefs that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most effectively relish more than success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to exist detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.^[7]

A field of study called memetics ^[8] arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model. Criticism from a variety of fronts has challenged the notion that academic study can examine memes empirically. All the same, developments in neuroimaging may make empirical study possible.^[nine] Some commentators in the social sciences question the idea that i tin can meaningfully categorize culture in terms of discrete units, and are specially critical of the biological nature of the theory's underpinnings.^[10] Others have argued that this use of the term is the consequence of a misunderstanding of the original proposal.^[11]

The word meme itself is a neologism coined by Richard Dawkins, originating from his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.^[12] Dawkins's own position is somewhat cryptic. He welcomed North. K. Humphrey'due south proposition that "memes should be considered as living structures, not just metaphorically"^[12] and proposed to regard memes as "physically residing in the encephalon."^[13] Although Dawkins said his original intentions had been simpler, he approved Humphrey's stance and he endorsed Susan Blackmore'due south 1999 projection to give a scientific theory of memes, complete with predictions and empirical support.^[fourteen]

Etymology

The term meme is a shortening (modeled on factor) of mimeme, which comes from Ancient Greek mīmēma ( μίμημα ; pronounced [míːmɛːma]), meaning 'imitated thing', itself from mimeisthai ( μιμεῖσθαι , 'to imitate'), from mimos ( μῖμος , 'mime').^{[15] [16] [17]}

The give-and-take was coined by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Factor (1976) equally a concept for give-and-take of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena.^{[12] [18]} Examples of memes given in Dawkins' book include melodies, catchphrases, mode, and the engineering of edifice arches.^[19] The give-and-take 'meme' is autological in nature, meaning it's a word that describes itself; in other words, the discussion 'meme' is itself a meme.^{[ citation needed ]}

Origins

Early on formulations

Although Richard Dawkins invented the term meme and developed meme theory, he has not claimed that the idea was entirely novel,^[twenty] and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past.^[21]

For example, the possibility that ideas were subject to the same pressures of evolution as were biological attributes was discussed in the time of Charles Darwin. T. H. Huxley (1880) claimed that "The struggle for beingness holds every bit much in the intellectual equally in the concrete earth. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its ability of resisting extinction by its rivals."^[22]

In 1904, Richard Semon published Die Mneme (which appeared in English language in 1924 every bit The Mneme). The term mneme was also used in Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of the White Pismire (1926), with some parallels to Dawkins'southward concept.^[21] Kenneth State highway had, in 1954, coined the related terms emic and etic, generalizing the linguistic units of phoneme, morpheme, grapheme, lexeme, and tagmeme (equally set out by Leonard Bloomfield), distinguishing insider and outside views of communicative behavior.^[23]

Dawkins

The word meme originated with Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Factor.

Dawkins cites every bit inspiration the work of geneticist L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, anthropologist F. T. Cloak,^{[24] [25]} and ethologist J. M. Cullen.^[26] Dawkins wrote that evolution depended non on the detail chemical footing of genetics, just but on the existence of a self-replicating unit of measurement of transmission—in the case of biological evolution, the gene. For Dawkins, the meme exemplified another cocky-replicating unit with potential significance in explaining human behavior and cultural evolution.

"Kilroy was hither" was a graffito that became popular in the 1940s, and existed under diverse names in different countries, illustrating how a meme can exist modified through replication. This is seen every bit 1 of the get-go widespread memes in the world^[27]

Dawkins used the term to refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator. He hypothesized that ane could view many cultural entities as replicators, and pointed to melodies, fashions and learned skills as examples. Memes generally replicate through exposure to humans, who take evolved as efficient copiers of information and behavior. Because humans exercise non always re-create memes perfectly, and considering they may refine, combine or otherwise change them with other memes to create new memes, they tin change over time. Dawkins likened the process by which memes survive and change through the evolution of civilization to the natural selection of genes in biological development.^[19]

Dawkins defined the meme every bit a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of faux and replication, only after definitions would vary. The lack of a consistent, rigorous, and precise understanding of what typically makes up one unit of measurement of cultural transmission remains a trouble in debates nearly memetics.^[28] In contrast, the concept of genetics gained concrete evidence with the discovery of the biological functions of DNA. Meme transmission requires a physical medium, such equally photons, audio waves, touch, gustation, or aroma because memes tin can be transmitted only through the senses.

Dawkins noted that in a society with culture a person need non have descendants to remain influential in the actions of individuals thousands of years after their death:

Only if you lot contribute to the world's civilisation, if you accept a good idea...it may alive on, intact, long after your genes take dissolved in the common puddle. Socrates may or may not have a gene or two alive in the globe today, as Chiliad.C. Williams has remarked, but who cares? The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus and Marconi are notwithstanding going strong.^[vi]

Memetic lifecycle: transmission, retentivity

Memes, analogously to genes, vary in their bent to replicate; successful memes remain and spread, whereas unfit ones stall and are forgotten. Thus, memes that prove more effective at replicating and surviving are selected in the meme puddle.

Memes first need retentivity. The longer a meme stays in its hosts, the college its chances of propagation are. When a host uses a meme, the meme'southward life is extended.^[29] The reuse of the neural space hosting a certain meme's copy to host dissimilar memes is the greatest threat to that meme's re-create.^[30] A meme that increases the longevity of its hosts will generally survive longer. On the contrary, a meme that shortens the longevity of its hosts volition tend to disappear faster. Nevertheless, as hosts are mortal, retention is non sufficient to perpetuate a meme in the long term; memes also need manual.

Life-forms can transmit information both vertically (from parent to child, via replication of genes) and horizontally (through viruses and other means). Memes can replicate vertically or horizontally within a single biological generation. They may too lie fallow for long periods of time.

Memes reproduce past copying from a nervous system to another 1, either past communication or imitation. Faux often involves the copying of an observed behavior of another individual. Communication may be direct or indirect, where memes transmit from one individual to some other through a copy recorded in an inanimate source, such every bit a volume or a musical score. Adam McNamara has suggested that memes can exist thereby classified as either internal or external memes (i-memes or due east-memes).^[9]

Some commentators accept likened the transmission of memes to the spread of contagions.^[31] Social contagions such as fads, hysteria, copycat crime, and copycat suicide exemplify memes seen as the contagious simulated of ideas. Observers distinguish the contagious simulated of memes from instinctively contagious phenomena such as yawning and laughing, which they consider innate (rather than socially learned) behaviors.^[32]

Aaron Lynch described 7 general patterns of meme transmission, or "thought contamination":^[33]

1. Quantity of parenthood: an thought that influences the number of children one has. Children respond particularly receptively to the ideas of their parents, and thus ideas that directly or indirectly encourage a higher birth rate will replicate themselves at a college rate than those that discourage higher birth rates.
2. Efficiency of parenthood: an idea that increases the proportion of children who will adopt ideas of their parents. Cultural separatism exemplifies one practise in which one can wait a college rate of meme-replication—because the meme for separation creates a barrier from exposure to competing ideas.
3. Proselytic: ideas generally passed to others across i'south ain children. Ideas that encourage the proselytism of a meme, as seen in many religious or political movements, can replicate memes horizontally through a given generation, spreading more than rapidly than parent-to-kid meme-transmissions do.
4. Preservational: ideas that influence those that hold them to continue to hold them for a long time. Ideas that encourage longevity in their hosts, or leave their hosts peculiarly resistant to abandoning or replacing these ideas, enhance the preservability of memes and afford protection from the contest or proselytism of other memes.
5. Adversative: ideas that influence those that hold them to attack or sabotage competing ideas and/or those that hold them. Adversative replication can give an advantage in meme transmission when the meme itself encourages assailment against other memes.
6. Cognitive: ideas perceived as cogent by well-nigh in the population who run across them. Cognitively transmitted memes depend heavily on a cluster of other ideas and cognitive traits already widely held in the population, and thus usually spread more passively than other forms of meme transmission. Memes spread in cerebral transmission do not count as self-replicating.
7. Motivational: ideas that people adopt because they perceive some cocky-interest in adopting them. Strictly speaking, motivationally transmitted memes practice non self-propagate, merely this mode of manual often occurs in clan with memes cocky-replicated in the efficiency parental, proselytic and preservational modes.

Memes as detached units

Dawkins initially divers meme as a noun that "conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation."^[19] John S. Wilkins retained the notion of meme every bit a kernel of cultural imitation while emphasizing the meme's evolutionary aspect, defining the meme every bit "the least unit of sociocultural information relative to a option process that has favorable or unfavorable option bias that exceeds its endogenous tendency to change."^[34] The meme every bit a unit provides a convenient means of discussing "a piece of thought copied from person to person," regardless of whether that thought contains others inside it, or forms part of a larger meme. A meme could consist of a single word, or a meme could consist of the entire spoken language in which that give-and-take first occurred. This forms an illustration to the idea of a gene equally a single unit of measurement of self-replicating information found on the self-replicating chromosome.

While the identification of memes as "units" conveys their nature to replicate as detached, indivisible entities, it does not imply that thoughts somehow go quantized or that "diminutive" ideas exist that cannot be dissected into smaller pieces. A meme has no given size. Susan Blackmore writes that melodies from Beethoven's symphonies are commonly used to illustrate the difficulty involved in delimiting memes every bit discrete units. She notes that while the outset four notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony ( listen(help·info) ) course a meme widely replicated as an independent unit, 1 can regard the entire symphony as a unmarried meme too.^[28]

The disability to pin an thought or cultural feature to quantifiable key units is widely acknowledged every bit a problem for memetics. It has been argued however that the traces of memetic processing can be quantified utilizing neuroimaging techniques which mensurate changes in the connectivity profiles between brain regions."^[ix] Blackmore meets such criticism by stating that memes compare with genes in this respect: that while a gene has no particular size, nor can nosotros ascribe every phenotypic feature directly to a detail gene, it has value because it encapsulates that central unit of inherited expression subject to evolutionary pressures. To illustrate, she notes evolution selects for the gene for features such as eye colour; information technology does not select for the individual nucleotide in a strand of DNA. Memes play a comparable part in understanding the evolution of imitated behaviors.^[28]

Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process (1981) by Charles J. Lumsden and E. O. Wilson proposes the theory that genes and culture co-evolve, and that the fundamental biological units of culture must correspond to neuronal networks that function equally nodes of semantic memory. Lumsden and Wilson coined their own word, culturgen, which did not catch on. Coauthor Wilson subsequently best-selling the term meme every bit the all-time label for the cardinal unit of cultural inheritance in his 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, which elaborates upon the primal role of memes in unifying the natural and social sciences.^[35]

Evolutionary influences on memes

Dawkins noted the iii conditions that must exist for evolution to occur:^[36]

1. variation, or the introduction of new modify to existing elements;
2. heredity or replication, or the chapters to create copies of elements;
3. differential "fitness", or the opportunity for one element to be more or less suited to the surroundings than another.

Dawkins emphasizes that the process of evolution naturally occurs whenever these conditions co-exist, and that evolution does not apply only to organic elements such as genes. He regards memes equally too having the backdrop necessary for evolution, and thus sees meme evolution as not just analogous to genetic evolution, but as a real phenomenon subject field to the laws of natural choice. Dawkins noted that as various ideas laissez passer from one generation to the next, they may either enhance or backbite from the survival of the people who obtain those ideas, or influence the survival of the ideas themselves. For instance, a certain civilization may develop unique designs and methods of tool-making that give it a competitive advantage over another civilization. Each tool-design thus acts somewhat similarly to a biological cistron in that some populations have it and others do not, and the meme'southward function directly affects the presence of the design in future generations. In keeping with the thesis that in evolution one tin regard organisms simply as suitable "hosts" for reproducing genes, Dawkins argues that i can view people as "hosts" for replicating memes. Consequently, a successful meme may or may not need to provide whatever benefit to its host.^[36]

Unlike genetic development, memetic development can bear witness both Darwinian and Lamarckian traits. Cultural memes will take the feature of Lamarckian inheritance when a host aspires to replicate the given meme through inference rather than by exactly copying it. Take for example the example of the transmission of a simple skill such as hammering a nail, a skill that a learner imitates from watching a demonstration without necessarily imitating every detached motion modeled by the instructor in the sit-in, stroke for stroke.^[37] Susan Blackmore distinguishes the difference between the two modes of inheritance in the development of memes, characterizing the Darwinian mode as "copying the instructions" and the Lamarckian as "copying the product."^[28]

Clusters of memes, or memeplexes (also known every bit meme complexes or as memecomplexes), such as cultural or political doctrines and systems, may also play a part in the acceptance of new memes. Memeplexes comprise groups of memes that replicate together and coadapt.^[28] Memes that fit within a successful memeplex may proceeds credence past "piggybacking" on the success of the memeplex. As an example, John D. Gottsch discusses the transmission, mutation and option of religious memeplexes and the theistic memes independent.^[38] Theistic memes discussed include the "prohibition of aberrant sexual practices such as incest, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, castration, and religious prostitution", which may have increased vertical transmission of the parent religious memeplex. Similar memes are thereby included in the majority of religious memeplexes, and harden over time; they become an "inviolable canon" or set of dogmas, eventually finding their fashion into secular law. This could besides be referred to as the propagation of a taboo.

Memetics

The discipline of memetics, which dates from the mid-1980s, provides an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer based on the concept of the meme. Memeticists have proposed that just as memes part analogously to genes, memetics functions analogously to genetics. Memetics attempts to use conventional scientific methods (such as those used in population genetics and epidemiology) to explain existing patterns and transmission of cultural ideas.

Primary criticisms of memetics include the claim that memetics ignores established advances in other fields of cultural report, such as folklore, cultural anthropology, cognitive psychology, and social psychology. Questions remain whether or not the meme concept counts every bit a validly disprovable scientific theory. This view regards memetics every bit a theory in its infancy: a protoscience to proponents, or a pseudoscience to some detractors.

Criticism of meme theory

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (February 2021)

An objection to the written report of the development of memes in genetic terms (although not to the existence of memes) involves a perceived gap in the gene/meme illustration: the cumulative development of genes depends on biological selection-pressures neither too great nor too minor in relation to mutation-rates. In that location seems no reason to remember that the aforementioned balance volition exist in the pick pressures on memes.^[39]

Luis Benitez-Bribiesca G.D., a critic of memetics, calls the theory a "pseudoscientific dogma" and "a dangerous thought that poses a threat to the serious study of consciousness and cultural evolution". As a factual criticism, Benitez-Bribiesca points to the lack of a "code script" for memes (coordinating to the DNA of genes), and to the excessive instability of the meme mutation mechanism (that of an thought going from 1 encephalon to some other), which would lead to a low replication accuracy and a high mutation charge per unit, rendering the evolutionary process cluttered.^[twoscore] In his book Darwin'due south Dangerous Thought Daniel C. Dennett rebuts this claim, pointing to the existence of self-regulating correction mechanisms (vaguely resembling those of gene transcription) enabled by the redundancy and other properties of most meme expression languages which stabilize information transfer.^[41] Dennett notes that spiritual narratives, including music and trip the light fantastic forms, can survive in full particular across any number of generations even in cultures with oral tradition only. Memes for which stable copying methods are bachelor will inevitably go selected for survival more often than those which can merely accept unstable mutations, therefore going extinct.

British political philosopher John Gray has characterized Dawkins'southward memetic theory of religion as "nonsense" and "not even a theory... the latest in a succession of ill-judged Darwinian metaphors", comparable to Intelligent Design in its value as a science.^[42]

Another critique comes from semiotic theorists such as Terrence Deacon^[43] and Kalevi Kull.^[44] This view regards the concept of "meme" as a primitivized concept of "sign". The meme is thus described in memetics as a sign lacking a triadic nature. Semioticians tin regard a meme as a "degenerate" sign, which includes just its ability of being copied. Accordingly, in the broadest sense, the objects of copying are memes, whereas the objects of translation and interpretation are signs.^{[ clarification needed ]}

Fracchia and Lewontin regard memetics as reductionist and inadequate.^[45] Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr disapproved of Dawkins'south gene-based view and usage of the term "meme", asserting information technology to exist an "unnecessary synonym" for "concept", reasoning that concepts are not restricted to an individual or a generation, may persist for long periods of time, and may evolve.^[46]

Radim Chvaja, a researcher for Masaryk Academy states that Memetic theory has failed due to the idea'due south founders Richard Dawkins and George C. Williams taking on a "strict adoption" of their argument which in turn forced them to dig in to the idea that the replication of a meme is biological in nature.^[47]

Elliott Oring calls Dawkins' term "the selfish cistron" potentially "dangerous and misleading". Co-ordinate to Oring, Dawkins suggests that genes aren't already selfish in the sense that they will exercise whatever it takes to survive and replicate equally it is. Memes every bit Dawkins describes them do not carry that manner, co-ordinate to Oring. They do not accept strict generational lines, and they do not do whatever information technology takes to clinch their own survival, since memes are not live. Oring goes on to say that memes are different from genes in the sense that they do not particularly need to keep their private biological hosts alive, as they do not rely on any type of genetic code to replicate and reproduce. Oring suggests that the problem with memes every bit a whole is that they cannot be "precisely specified".^[48]

Applications

Opinions differ equally to how all-time to apply the concept of memes inside a "proper" disciplinary framework. One view sees memes every bit providing a useful philosophical perspective with which to examine cultural development. Proponents of this view (such equally Susan Blackmore and Daniel Dennett) argue that considering cultural developments from a meme'due south-eye view—equally if memes themselves respond to pressure to maximise their own replication and survival—tin pb to useful insights and yield valuable predictions into how culture develops over time. Others such as Bruce Edmonds and Robert Aunger take focused on the demand to provide an empirical grounding for memetics to become a useful and respected scientific subject.^{[49] [50]}

A third approach, described by Joseph Poulshock, every bit "radical memetics" seeks to place memes at the centre of a materialistic theory of mind and of personal identity.^[51]

Prominent researchers in evolutionary psychology and anthropology, including Scott Atran, Dan Sperber, Pascal Boyer, John Tooby and others, fence the possibility of incompatibility between modularity of heed and memetics.^{[ commendation needed ]} In their view, minds structure certain communicable aspects of the ideas produced, and these catching aspects generally trigger or arm-twist ideas in other minds through inference (to relatively rich structures generated from often depression-fidelity input) and not high-fidelity replication or simulated. Atran discusses advice involving religious beliefs as a instance in signal. In one set of experiments he asked religious people to write downward on a slice of paper the meanings of the X Commandments. Despite the subjects' own expectations of consensus, interpretations of the commandments showed wide ranges of variation, with footling evidence of consensus. In some other experiment, subjects with autism and subjects without autism interpreted ideological and religious sayings (for example, "Let a g flowers flower" or "To everything there is a flavor"). People with autism showed a significant trend to closely paraphrase and repeat content from the original statement (for example: "Don't cut flowers before they bloom"). Controls tended to infer a wider range of cultural meanings with little replicated content (for example: "Become with the flow" or "Everyone should have equal opportunity"). Simply the subjects with autism—who lack the degree of inferential capacity normally associated with aspects of theory of mind—came close to functioning as "meme machines."^[52]

In his book The Robot's Rebellion, Keith Stanovich uses the memes and memeplex concepts to describe a program of cognitive reform that he refers to as a "rebellion." Specifically, Stanovich argues that the utilise of memes equally a descriptor for cultural units is beneficial because it serves to emphasize transmission and acquisition properties that parallel the study of epidemiology. These properties make salient the sometimes parasitic nature of acquired memes, and every bit a outcome individuals should exist motivated to reflectively acquire memes using what he calls a "Neurathian bootstrap" process.^[53]

Memetic explanations of racism

In Cultural Software: A Theory of Credo, Jack Balkin argued that memetic processes tin explicate many of the most familiar features of ideological thought. His theory of "cultural software" maintained that memes form narratives, social networks, metaphoric and metonymic models, and a variety of different mental structures. Balkin maintains that the same structures used to generate ideas about free speech or costless markets besides serve to generate racistic beliefs. To Balkin, whether memes become harmful or maladaptive depends on the environmental context in which they exist rather than in any special source or manner to their origination. Balkin describes racist beliefs equally "fantasy" memes that become harmful or unjust "ideologies" when various peoples come together, as through trade or competition.^[54]

Faith

Richard Dawkins chosen for a re-analysis of religion in terms of the evolution of self-replicating ideas autonomously from any resulting biological advantages they might bestow.

As an enthusiastic Darwinian, I accept been dissatisfied with explanations that my beau-enthusiasts take offered for man behaviour. They take tried to look for 'biological advantages' in diverse attributes of human civilization. For example, tribal religion has been seen every bit a mechanism for solidifying group identity, valuable for a pack-hunting species whose individuals rely on cooperation to catch large and fast prey. Frequently the evolutionary preconception in terms of which such theories are framed is implicitly group-selectionist, but information technology is possible to rephrase the theories in terms of orthodox factor selection.

He argued that the office of cardinal replicator in cultural development belongs not to genes, but to memes replicating thought from person to person by means of fake. These replicators reply to selective pressures that may or may not affect biological reproduction or survival.^[nineteen]

In her book The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore regards religions as particularly tenacious memes. Many of the features common to the most widely skilful religions provide built-in advantages in an evolutionary context, she writes. For example, religions that preach of the value of faith over evidence from everyday experience or reason inoculate societies confronting many of the virtually basic tools people commonly employ to evaluate their ideas. By linking altruism with religious amalgamation, religious memes can proliferate more apace considering people perceive that they can reap societal as well as personal rewards. The longevity of religious memes improves with their documentation in revered religious texts.^[28]

Aaron Lynch attributed the robustness of religious memes in homo culture to the fact that such memes incorporate multiple modes of meme transmission. Religious memes pass down the generations from parent to kid and across a single generation through the meme-commutation of proselytism. Most people volition hold the religion taught them past their parents throughout their life. Many religions feature adversarial elements, punishing betrayment, for instance, or demonizing infidels. In Thought Contagion Lynch identifies the memes of transmission in Christianity as specially powerful in scope. Believers view the conversion of non-believers both as a religious duty and as an act of altruism. The promise of heaven to believers and threat of hell to not-believers provide a potent incentive for members to retain their belief. Lynch asserts that belief in the Crucifixion of Jesus in Christianity amplifies each of its other replication advantages through the indebtedness believers accept to their Savior for sacrifice on the cross. The image of the crucifixion recurs in religious sacraments, and the proliferation of symbols of the cross in homes and churches potently reinforces the broad assortment of Christian memes.^[33]

Although religious memes have proliferated in homo cultures, the modern scientific community has been relatively resistant to religious belief. Robertson (2007)^[55] reasoned that if development is accelerated in conditions of propagative difficulty,^[41] then we would look to run into variations of religious memes, established in full general populations, addressed to scientific communities. Using a memetic approach, Robertson deconstructed two attempts to privilege religiously held spirituality in scientific discourse. Advantages of a memetic approach every bit compared to more traditional "modernization" and "supply side" theses in understanding the evolution and propagation of faith were explored.

Architectural memes

In A Theory of Architecture, Nikos Salingaros speaks of memes as "freely propagating clusters of information" which can be beneficial or harmful. He contrasts memes to patterns and true knowledge, characterizing memes equally "greatly simplified versions of patterns" and equally "unreasoned matching to some visual or mnemonic epitome."^[56] Taking reference to Dawkins, Salingaros emphasizes that they tin can be transmitted due to their own communicative properties, that "the simpler they are, the faster they tin proliferate," and that the nearly successful memes "come with a great psychological appeal."^[57]

Architectural memes, according to Salingaros, can have destructive power: "Images portrayed in architectural magazines representing buildings that could non possibly suit everyday uses become fixed in our retention, so we reproduce them unconsciously."^[58] He lists various architectural memes that circulated since the 1920s and which, in his view, have led to contemporary architecture becoming quite decoupled from human needs. They lack connection and meaning, thereby preventing "the cosmos of true connections necessary to our understanding of the world." He sees them every bit no unlike from antipatterns in software design—as solutions that are false but are re-utilized however.^[59]

Internet culture

An "Internet meme" is a concept that spreads rapidly from person to person via the Internet.^[lx] typically every bit a class of humor.

In 2013, Richard Dawkins characterized an Internet meme as one deliberately altered by human creativity, distinguished from his original thought involving mutation "past random change and a course of Darwinian selection."^[61]

Internet memes have been around since the beginning of the internet itself, only were made massively popular when social media sites and message boards first began popping up. Typically, memes have been based on a sure format such equally the 'Grumpy Cat' or 'Bad-Luck Brian' memes that were popular in the early 2010'southward. the creator of the meme conveys a message through said format. Internet memes have get one of the primary forms of digital communication in the past two decades. They are used by everyday people for purposes of self-expression, they are used by businesses for advertising purposes, past political groups to make points or convey letters to their followers, for comedic purposes and even for religious reasons.

Cyberspace memes are an example of Dawkins' meme theory at work in the sense of how they so quickly mirror current cultural events and get a part of how the fourth dimension menstruation is defined. Limor Shifman uses the example of the 'Gangnam Style' Music video by South Korean pop-star, Psy that went viral in 2012. Shifman cites examples of how the meme mutated itself into the cultural sphere, mixing with other things going on at the time such as the 2012 U.S. presidential election, which led to the creation of Paw Romney Style, a parody of the original Gangnam fashion, intended to exist a jab at the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, Hand Romney.^{[62] [63] [64]}

Meme stocks

Meme stocks, a particular subset of Internet memes in full general, are listed companies lauded for the social media fizz they create, rather than their operating functioning.^[65] r/wallstreetbets, a subreddit where participants discuss stock and option trading, and the financial services visitor Robinhood Markets, became notable in 2021 for their involvement on the popularization and enhancement of meme stocks.^{[66] [67]}

See as well

• Baldwin effect
• The Offset of Infinity
• Biosemiotics
• Chain letter of the alphabet
• Darwin machine
• Dual inheritance theory
• Evolutionary biology
• Framing (social sciences)
• Internet meme
• Leiden school
• Memetic algorithm
• Memetic engineering
• Phraseme
• Propaganda
• Psycholinguistics
• Snowclone
• Survivals
• Universal Darwinism
• Viral marketing
• Viral video

Notes

1. ^ "meme". Oxford Dictionaries. Archived from the original on 2019-05-23. Retrieved 2017-12-30 .
2. ^ "meme Meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary". Cambridge Dictionary.
3. ^ "meme substantive". Oxford Learner's Dictionaries. Archived from the original on 2019-05-20. Retrieved 2017-12-thirty .
4. ^ Meme. Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
5. ^ Graham 2002
6. ^ ^{a b} Dawkins, Richard (2006). The Selfish Cistron 30th Ceremony Edition (3rd ed.). Oxford Academy Press. p. 199. ISBN9780191537554.
7. ^ Kelly 1994, p. 360 "But if we consider culture every bit its ain self-organizing system—a arrangement with its own calendar and pressure to survive—then the history of humanity gets even more interesting. As Richard Dawkins has shown, systems of self-replicating ideas or memes tin quickly accumulate their own agenda and behaviours. I assign no higher motive to a cultural entity than the archaic drive to reproduce itself and alter its environment to aid its spread. One manner the self organizing system can practise this is by consuming human biological resources."
8. ^ Heylighen & Chielens 2009
9. ^ ^{a b c} McNamara 2011
10. ^ Gill, Jameson. 2011. "Memes and narrative analysis: A potential direction for the development of neo-Darwinian orientated inquiry in organisations." EURAM eleven: Proceedings of the European Academy of Direction. European Academy of Management. ISSN 2466-7498. S2CID 54894144.
11. ^ Burman, J. T. (2012). "The misunderstanding of memes: Biography of an unscientific object, 1976–1999". Perspectives on Science. 20 (1): 75–104. doi:10.1162/POSC_a_00057.
12. ^ ^{a b c} Dawkins 1989, p. 192 "Nosotros need a proper noun for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of fake. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, simply I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit similar 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends volition forgive me if I abridge mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, information technology could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'retentivity', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'."
13. ^ Dawkins, Richard (1982), The Extended Phenotype, Oxford University Printing, p. 109, ISBN978-0-19-286088-0
14. ^ Dawkins'southward foreword to Blackmore 1999, p. xvi-xvii
15. ^ The American Heritage Lexicon of the English Language: Quaternary Edition, 2000
16. ^ Harper, Douglas. "meme". Online Etymology Dictionary.
17. ^ μίμημα , μιμεῖσθαι , μῖμος . Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project.
18. ^ Millikan 2004, p. 16. "Richard Dawkins invented the term 'memes' to stand for items that are reproduced past imitation rather than reproduced genetically."
19. ^ ^{a b c d} Dawkins 1989, p. 352
20. ^ Shalizi, Cosma Rohilla. "Memes". Center for the Report of Complex Systems. University of Michigan. Archived from the original on 2012-06-11. Retrieved 2021-10-08 .
21. ^ ^{a b} Laurent, John (1999). "A Notation on the Origin of 'Memes'/'Mnemes'". Journal of Memetics. 3 (1): 14–19. Archived from the original on 2021-04-13.
22. ^ Huxley, T. H. (1880). "The coming of age of 'The origin of species'". Science. 1 (2): 15–20. doi:ten.1126/science.os-one.2.15. PMID 17751948.
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24. ^ Cloak, F. T. 1966. "Cultural microevolution." Enquiry Previews thirteen(ii):7–10. (Also presented at the November, 1966 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.)
25. ^ Cloak, F. T. 1975. "Is a cultural ethology possible?" Human Environmental iii:161–82. doi:10.1007/BF01531639.
26. ^ "The Selfish Gene: Affiliate 11 - Summary & Analysis." LitCharts.
27. ^ Gardner, Martin (five March 2000). "Kilroy Was Here". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 2021-x-08 .
28. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Blackmore 1999
29. ^ Heylighen, Francis. "Meme replication: the memetic life-cycle". Principia Cybernetica . Retrieved 2013-07-26 .
30. ^ R. Evers, John. "A justification of societal altruism according to the memetic application of Hamilton's rule". Retrieved 2013-07-26 .
31. ^ Blackmore 1998; "The term 'contagion' is often associated with memetics. We may say that certain memes are contagious, or more contagious than others."
32. ^ Blackmore 1998
33. ^ ^{a b} Lynch 1996
34. ^ Wilkins, John Due south. (1998). "What's in a Meme? Reflections from the perspective of the history and philosophy of evolutionary biology". Journal of Memetics. 2. Archived from the original on 2009-12-01. Retrieved 2008-12-xiii .
35. ^ Wilson 1998
36. ^ ^{a b} Dennett 1991
37. ^ Dawkins 2004
38. ^ Gottsch, John D. (2001). "Mutation, Selection, And Vertical Transmission Of Theistic Memes In Religious Canons". Journal of Memetics. 5 (1). Archived from the original on 2021-04-12. Retrieved 2021-10-08 .
39. ^ Sterelny & Griffiths 1999; p. 333
40. ^ Benitez Bribiesca, Luis (January 2001), "Memetics: A unsafe thought" (PDF), Interciencia: Revista de Ciencia y Technologia de América, 26 (1): 29–31, ISSN 0378-1844, retrieved 2010-02-eleven , If the mutation rate is high and takes place over brusque periods, as memetics predict, instead of selection, adaptation and survival a cluttered disintegration occurs due to the accumulation of errors.
41. ^ ^{a b} Dennett, Daniel C. (1995), Darwin's Dangerous Thought: Evolution and the meanings of life, New York: Simon and Schuster
42. ^ Gray, John (fourteen March 2008). "The atheist delusion". The Guardian.
43. ^ Deacon, Terrence. "The trouble with memes (and what to do about it)". The Semiotic Review of Books. 10: three.
44. ^ Kull, Kalevi (2000). "Copy versus translate, meme versus sign: evolution of biological textuality". European Journal for Semiotic Studies. 12 (1): 101–120.
45. ^ Fracchia, Joseph; R C Lewontin (February 2005), "The price of metaphor", History and Theory, 44 (i): xiv–29, doi:10.1111/j.1468-2303.2005.00305.10, ISSN 0018-2656, JSTOR 3590779, The selectionist image requires the reduction of lodge and culture to inheritance systems that consist of randomly varying, individual units, some of which are selected, and some non; and with club and civilisation thus reduced to inheritance systems, history can be reduced to "evolution." [...] [Due west]e conclude that while historical phenomena tin can always exist modeled selectionistically, selectionist explanations do no work, nor do they contribute annihilation new except a misleading vocabulary that anesthetizes history.
46. ^ Mayr, Ernst (1997). "The objects of choice". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United states of America. 94 (six): 2091–2094. Bibcode:1997PNAS...94.2091M. doi:x.1073/pnas.94.6.2091. PMC33654. PMID 9122151.
47. ^ Chvaja, Radim (August 2020). [Chvaja, Radim (2020-08). "Why Did Memetics Fail? Comparative Example Study". Perspectives on Science. 28 (4): 542–570. doi:ten.1162/posc_a_00350. ISSN 1063-6145. "Why did Memetics fail? Comparative Case study"]. Perspectives on Science. 28 (4): 542–570. doi:x.1162/posc_a_00350. S2CID 220846725.
48. ^ Oring, Elliot (April 1995). [Mintz, Laurence; Oring, Elliott (1995-04). "Jokes and Their Relations". Western Folklore. 54 (ii): 165. doi:10.2307/1500402. ISSN 0043-373X. Check appointment values in: |date= (help) "Jokes and their relations"]. Western Folklore. 54: 165. doi:10.2307/1500402. JSTOR 1500402.
49. ^ Edmonds, Bruce (September 2002). "Three Challenges for the Survival of Memetics". Journal of Memetics. 6 (2). Archived from the original on 2021-09-08. Retrieved 2021-10-08 .
50. ^ Aunger 2000
51. ^ Poulshock 2002
52. ^ Atran 2002
53. ^ Stanovich, Keith East. (2004). The Robot'southward Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin (1st ed.). University Of Chicago Press. ISBN978-0-226-77089-5.
54. ^ Balkin 1998
55. ^ Robertson, Lloyd Hawkeye (2007), "Reflections on the use of spirituality to privilege religion in scientific discourse: Incorporating considerations of self", Journal of Religion and Wellness, 46 (three): 449–461, doi:10.1007/s10943-006-9105-y, S2CID 39449795
56. ^ Salingaros 2008, pp. 243, 260.
57. ^ Salingaros 2008, pp. 243–245.
58. ^ Salingaros 2008, p. 249.
59. ^ Salingaros 2008, p. 259.
60. ^ Schubert, Karen (31 July 2003). "Bazaar goes bizarre". USA Today . Retrieved 2007-07-05 .
61. ^ Solon, Olivia (twenty June 2013). "Richard Dawkins on the cyberspace's hijacking of the word 'meme'". Wired UK. Archived from the original on 2013-07-09.
62. ^ Pettis, Ben T. (nineteen August 2021). [Pettis, Ben T. (2021-08-19). "Know Your Meme and the homogenization of web history". Internet Histories: ane–17. doi:10.1080/24701475.2021.1968657. ISSN 2470-1475. "Know your meme and the homogenization of Web history"]. Cyberspace Histories. 1–17: 1–17. doi:10.1080/24701475.2021.1968657. S2CID 238660211.
63. ^ Denisova, Anastasia (2019). Internet Memes and Society: Social, Cultural and Political Contexts. New York: Routledge. pp. xiii–26. ISBN9780429469404.
64. ^ Shifman, Limor (26 March 2013). [Shifman, Limor (2013-03-26). "Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual Troublemaker". Journal of Computer-Mediated Advice. 18 (3): 362–377. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12013. ISSN 1083-6101. "Memes in a Digital Earth: Reconciling with a Conceptual troublemaker"]. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 18 (3): 362–377. doi:x.1111/jcc4.12013.
65. ^ Rossolillo, Nicholas (23 September 2021). "What Are Meme Stocks?". The Motley Fool . Retrieved 2021-10-08 .
66. ^ Robinhood's shares spring as much as 65 percent, like the meme stocks information technology enabled. (The New York Times) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/business organisation/robinhood-stock-cost.html
67. ^ The 'Roaring Kitty' Rally: How a Reddit User and His Friends Roiled the Markets (The New York Times) https://world wide web.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/technology/roaring-kitty-reddit-gamestop-markets.html

References

• Atran, Scott (2002), In gods we trust: the evolutionary landscape of religion, Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Printing, ISBN978-0-xix-514930-2
• Atran, Scott (2001), "The Trouble with Memes" (PDF), Human Nature, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 351–381, doi:10.1007/s12110-001-1003-0, PMID 26192412, S2CID 1530055
• Aunger, Robert (2000), Darwinizing culture: the status of memetics as a science, Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press, ISBN978-0-19-263244-9
• Aunger, Robert (2002), The electric meme: a new theory of how we think, New York: Free Printing, ISBN978-0-7432-0150-6
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• Blackmore, Susan J. (1999), The meme machine, Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press, p. 288, ISBN978-0-19-850365-1 [trade paperback ISBN 0-9658817-8-4 (1999), ISBN 0-19-286212-10 (2000)]
• Brodie, Richard (1996), Virus of the mind: the new science of the meme, Seattle, WA: Integral Printing, p. 251, ISBN978-0-9636001-1-0
• Dawkins, Richard (1989), "11. Memes: the new replicators", The Selfish Gene (second ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Printing, p. 368, ISBN978-0-19-217773-5
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• Lynch, Aaron (1996), Thought contamination: how belief spreads through society, New York: BasicBooks, p. 208, ISBN978-0-465-08467-eight
• McNamara, Adam (2011), "Tin can nosotros mensurate memes?", Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience, three: one, doi:ten.3389/fnevo.2011.00001, PMC3118481, PMID 21720531
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External links

This audio file was created from a revision of this commodity dated 29 Baronial 2019 (2019-08-29), and does not reflect subsequent edits.

Wait upwards meme in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Dawkins'southward speech on the 30th ceremony of the publication of The Selfish Factor, Dawkins 2006
• "Evolution and Memes: The man encephalon as a selective simulated device": article by Susan Blackmore.
• Godwin, Mike. "Meme, Counter-meme". Wired . Retrieved 2009-eleven-05 .
• Journal of Memetics, a peer-refereed journal of memetics published from 1997 until 2005.
• Susan Blackmore: Memes and "temes", TED Talks Feb 2008.
• Christopher von Bülow: Article Meme, translated from: Jürgen Mittelstraß (ed.), Enzyklopädie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie, second edn, vol. 5, Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler 2013.
• Richard Dawkins explains the real pregnant of the discussion 'meme'
• Richard Dawkins | Memes | Oxford Union

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